


Overs-verse, Pre-Academy

by Todesengel



Series: Overs-verse [2]
Category: Voltron: Lion Voltron
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel





	1. John and Mary

They met on assignment and John thought that Mary was nice but not his kind of woman -- he wasn't exactly partial to Academics and no mater what else he was told about her, Mary struck him as an Academic through and through -- right up until he came back to the study they were using as part of their cover and found an Imomli counter-intelligence officer lying face-down in a slowly widening pool of blood and Mary standing over him with a not-metaphorical-at-all smoking gun.

"Well," he said, and he was proud of the fact that his training had taught him how to appear cool and collected even in the face of circumstances such as these, "I think it's safe to say that our cover has been blown."

"No argument here," Mary said and then she nearly fainted and John only noticed that she was shivering when he had her in his arms.

"Sorry," she said. "I just. I really don't like guns."

"You did good, kid," he told her, and she swallowed, rapidly, and pulled herself together and on the long, lumbering flight back to HQ, with Mary frowning and scribbling notes in the marginalia of her papers – because it turned out she really was a historian and she had some kind of publishing contract to write a book about the third Say'd dynasty – he thought about how she'd felt in his arms, and found himself kind of wishing she was still there, soft and warm and iron underneath.


	2. John, after Joshua

It was never proven that Joshua's death was because of the work he did, but John knew in his gut that this was his fault and even if it wasn't he should have been home and not breaking through enemy safeguards two galaxies away. Even if it turned out that it truly was just pure bad luck that it had been _his_ child who'd been abducted and killed, John would still never forgive himself for not being _here_.

"I'm sorry, John, but I can't approve your transfer."

"My son is _dead_ , Henry. Some son of a bitch snatched him in broad daylight and I didn't learn about it until he was already dead. I wasn't there to protect him and now you're telling me that this government that I have served faithfully and well – this government that I've _never_ asked for anything – can't find me a job somewhere that will let me stay with what remains of my family?"

"John, listen to me. I’m your friend. Hell, I was Josh's godfather – you _know_ me – and I'm telling you right now that you're the best goddamn field agent we have and we aren't going to let you go no matter how much you or I might wish otherwise. My hands are tied."

John took deep breaths because Henry was his friend and he was just the messenger and anyway it wouldn't do him any good to get angry with the messenger. So instead he looked into Henry's eyes and lied.

"I've been compromised," he said. "This was a message."

"Fuck." Henry closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're sure?"

"Yes," John said.

"Shit. God. I'm so sorry John."

"They're going to go after them again, Henry. And I need to be with my family, I need to protect them and I can't do that if I'm half-way 'round the Universe."

"I know, I know." Henry sighed and he sounded old – he _looked_ old, and when the hell had that happened? "Look. I'll see what I can do."

"I have to be with them, Henry. I _have_ to."

"Yeah."

"I _have_ to."

"Yeah, John, yeah. I know."


	3. Keith, age 4

The first moments after it happened (and John knew that no matter how hard he tried he'd never be able to forget either the dull, squishy sound Keith had made when he'd landed or the sharp crack of his bones breaking) were full of panic and chaos, time stained red with the blood of his child and ears ringing with Keith's screams. His world was one of shock and fear and helplessness, and John didn't realize the white splinters jutting out of Keith's arm were bone until the ambulance had arrived and he was screaming at the EMTs to splint his son's arm, couldn't they see he was in pain? and they had to tell him that they didn't want to touch that arm because they were afraid they'd do additional damage.

A world of panic and fear (and John didn't even think to get angry with Anna and Will, not until after Keith had told him why he'd jumped off the roof, and even then it was mostly just yelling at them for telling a four-year-old that a towel was magic and he could fly, and that they should know better than that, they were his older siblings, they were supposed to look out for him) and John's focus narrowed down to the tiny hand in his and his brain whirring away, trying to think of all the ways he could use his rank to ease his boy's pain.

Even after they got Keith all patched up and doped up on drugs that made his eyes go big and black and gave him a slow, sleepy smile, John couldn't stop worrying, couldn't stop feeling like this was just a mad fantasy and he was still back in that moment, staring at his son lying on the ground, his heart gripped with the dreadful certainty that his boy was dead.

John brushed Keith's hair out of his eyes, let the warmth and softness of Keith's skin convince him that his son was alive, that _this_ was reality. The motion woke Keith up out of the half-sleep he'd been drifting in, and he smiled up at his father and said, "Daddy."

"Hey little man," John said around the strange lump in his throat. "You're gonna be okay."

"Daddy," Keith said again, and his eyes shone with something other than the drugs. "Daddy, I _flew_."

"Yeah bud, I know." John swallowed, and closed his eyes, and prayed that his son wouldn't try to fly again.


	4. Will, age 14

The fight really started because Will was being polite. Actually the fight probably started because of who Will's father was and how Will had been raised – seven years on border planets didn't exactly lead to a whole heck of a lot of polish and social grace – and the other asshole's insecurities and Will's general nature being that of the ‘stand up and fight' variety, but Will liked to think that it really started because the Dean was an old friend of the family and for all of his rough edges Will knew enough to know that it was terribly impolite to ignore old friends of the family.

So he'd done the polite thing – paid his respects, and all that – and he hadn't thought any further on the fact that he knew the Dean well enough to call him Uncle George until two days later when some hulking throwback to the pre-space age had cut in front of him in the lunch line.

"Hey!" Will said. "There's a line."

"Yeah? So?" Cro-Mag said.

"So, you need to go to the back."

"Nah, I think I'll stay right here, " Cro-Mag said, and Will stared at him in absolute shock because, okay, he knew his social skills were sub-par in most areas but even he knew about basic queue etiquette.

"You can't," he said. "You gotta go to the back of the line."

"And what if I don't want to," Cro-Mag said. "You gonna tell your ‘Uncle Georgie' on me? Huh? ‘S that what you're gonna do suckup?"

"What?" Will said, thoroughly confused.

"You heard me. I know how you got in here, suckup. I know your daddy pulled some strings. You don't belong here."

"Says who?"

"Me," Cro-Mag said, stepping forward until he was well within Will's personal space. "Got a problem with that?"

"You bet your fucking ass I do," Will said, and he'd always had a beautiful right hook.

"You little shit," Cro-Mag said, and Will didn't really remember much after that – just an indistinct blur of sound and sensation, dull thuds and pain, and then a couple of upperclassmen pulling them apart and then it was all over and he had a black-eye and bruised knuckles and Jell-o in his hair.

"Damn it, Will," his father said much later, after Will called him to let him know that he couldn't see his folks off because he'd been confined to campus, "what have I told you about picking fights?"

"He started it," Will muttered, ice-pack pressed against his throbbing eye.

"'He' always does, doesn't he?" His father sighed, a burst of static across the phone lines. "No more fighting Will, hear me? This is your first, last and only warning. I hear you've been in another fight and I'm pulling you out of there."

"Yeah Dad, sure, I hear you," Will said, and he was really glad this phone didn't have a vid screen because his father could always tell when he was lying just by looking at him. "I promise. No more fighting."


	5. Will, age 17

"You are such an asshole," Anna said, and Will thought that she was being seriously unfair about the whole thing, and anyway she should have had more respect for a guy with what was starting to feel like a broken jaw.

"Urngh," he said through his teeth and Anna rolled her eyes.

"Please, you've always been an asshole." She paced the length of the bed and back, hands balled up into fists, which in the lexicon of Anna's body language meant that she was weighing the pros and cons of punching a guy who was already injured. "He was just being nice!"

Will rolled his eyes and tried to convey with his hands that, no, Jimmy Zangari was not being nice, he was being a horn-dog and the less his little sister had to do with that sleazeball the better.

He was pretty sure she got the message and didn't appreciate his brotherly concern when she stopped pacing, glared at him, and gave him the finger.


	6. Anna and medicine

Anna started hanging out in the infirmary because Will tended to get into a fight on a bi-weekly basis and how else was she going to get blackmail material? She kept hanging out there after Will graduated because Dr. Schneck was actually pretty cool and kind of reminded Anna of Mom, although she'd never tell anyone that, and life on the border planets had taught her that it was never a bad thing to know a little rudimentary first aid. She'd just never thought about becoming a doctor herself until the day Tommy Jannsen slipped on a puddle of water in lab class while holding a glass beaker and damn near severed his brachial artery.

Afterwards, Dr. Schneck took her into the back office and poured her a cup of tea and said, "Nice job with the tourniquet, Anna."

Anna shrugged, because she still had Tommy's blood underneath her fingernails and her heart was still jacked up on adrenaline and she couldn't think about anything except that there had been an awful lot of blood.

"Have you ever considered going pre-med?"

"What?"

"I think you'd make an excellent doctor," Dr. Schneck said and Anna looked down at her shaking hands and the reality of what she had just done slammed into her so hard that she nearly fainted and had to have a lie down on one of the infirmary beds.


End file.
